Christdemokraten in Europa im 20. Jahrhundert

Catholic and Christian Democrat parties played an increasingly more important role in Europe after the-First World War and particulary in the first two decades after the Second World War. In the founding member states of the European Economic Community they made a major contribution to the practical realisation of the European idea. This edited volume marks the first attempt to study Catholic and Christian Democrat parties in Europe from a truly comparative European perspective that also includes the East-Central European countries Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. In the first section, two American and British historians highlight the Roots and Foundations of Christian Democrat in Europe in the Twentieth Century (I.). The second section comprises chapters that deal with the Catholic Parties in Interwar Europe and. in Exile (IL), the third section is concerned with the Christian Democrat parties in Postwar Europe (III.), while the fourth section deals with the transnational party cooperation of Christian Democrats. The chapters in sections II. and III. analyse the different national party traditions, particularly the dichotomy between Christian social and conservative and catholic-clerical and catch-all party tendencies. In particular, they all deal with three key aspects of the parties` structure and evolution: first, their social basis in society and especially their relationship with the Catholic Church; secondly, the conceptualisation of a `Christian` economic and social order; and thirdly, the evolution of their views on Europe and of their practical European policies. The chapters integrate elements of party history, structural history and of a modem history of ideas. Three experts provide a comparative discussion of common themes at the end of the three main sections (II --IV.). Based on up-to-date research by experts in their field, this. edited volume is an attempt to create a new basis for future comparative and all-European research on the social and political history of political Catholicism, Christian Democracy and Conservatism.